


Ripple Effect

by KumoriYami



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 17:29:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20915861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KumoriYami/pseuds/KumoriYami
Summary: All her life, Yukimura Chizuru has been warned to stay out of water by her father. It was a warning that she had faithfully obeyed without question, and even more so when he told her that her mother had died drowning. However, the first night she ends up in Kyoto when looking for her missing father, Chizuru falls into the ocean during an encounter with the Shinsengumi, and finds that's she more different than she thought she was while also learning that her father wasn't who she thought he was....A not exactly semi-mermaidish/pirate-sh au with saichi





	Ripple Effect

**Author's Note:**

> A not exactly semi-mermaidish/pirate-sh au
> 
> i was rewatching the scene from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie when jack goes this is the day you will always remember as the day you almost caught captain jack sparrow when i got hit by this weird idea.....
> 
> This will be set in a very, very, very, different au world... especially in terms of geography. i haven't thought that far ahead for how this world wll look but I will kinda thinking something like how land masses are not commonly found like in Skyland or Storm Hawks... but with everything surrounded by water (since i said with mermaidishs au lol)..... and somewhat like Venice or The Hobbit's Laketown. will likely be borrowing the names of various real world places for this... though i havent thought that far ahead.
> 
> Also, I said mermaidish since i don't think i'll have people with tails in this.... but rather kinda like how Atlanteans are portrayed in the DC/Marvel comics as human-like, or like the Blue from Michael Turner's Fathom, being with strength and abilities that grow stronger in the water.... and such. 
> 
> some elements in this chapter were partially inspired by Aspen Matthews origin story from Fathom in which Aspen grows up without knowing anything about her ancestry yet finds herself fascinated by water.
> 
> slow chapter bcuz prologue
> 
> will be saichi. because i'm biased. xD  
also kinda like the idea of Kimigiku/Hijikata and Sen/Harada.

Yukimura Chizuru let out a tentative breath as she saw the city of Kyoto come into sight. Unlike her hometown in Edo which was actually on land, Kyoto, she had heard, was a city that was built almost entirely on water to connect several relatively smaller islands together to accommodate its people given the scarcity of land which was continuously fought over by rival domains at sea all over the country. Unfortunately, she had heard that because Kyoto was home to where the sea-faring country's emperor resided and was on the ocean, that the city was a potential hotbed for far more conflicts than any of the other domains she had knowledge of....

Still, even she had to admit that the massive city was quite the city to behold as she continued towards it while hoping that no eyes that she passed would be able to see through her disguise as a young man as she was incredibly nervous to be travelling alone.... and to be anywhere near the ocean. After all, she had heard plenty of stories about the dangers of living on the water, and how some places were fighting everyday to push back against seafaring folk who preferred to plunder for their survival.... stories that had only served as part of her father's extensive warnings to her about staying away water - and the ocean in particular.

For as long as she could remember, her father had told her to not venture near water, though it was only when she started learning about medicine from him did Chizuru learn that it was because her mother had apparently died drowning and he feared that she would do the same that Chizuru had taken her father's words to heart. Still, Chizuru was hard pressed to deny how she did like spending her time near what rivers and ponds were near her home since there was something that just felt calming about being near water.... and even her father had a had a difficult time arguing that she shouldn't get too close since she was apparently more than excellent at fishing, though she always stayed out of the water itself.

"Father....." Chizuru let out a melancholic sigh as she gripped the hilt of the kodachi at her waist while she entered the city. If not for the fact that she hadn't heard from him in months and feared that he was missing, she would have never considered doing something that almost brazenly went against his words, and head to a city she knew that he hated because of his work as a shogunate doctor....

At least Kyoto at least didn't appear to be as violent as she expected despite seeing all the men carrying swords, not that she could differentiate between who were classified as samurai and ronin, as Chizuru began to ask around for information regarding a Dr. Matsumoto, the man her father had told her to contact in case of emergency who she had sent a letter to for information before she had left Edo, while also asking if anyone had seen a man who resembled her father....

\------------------

When Chizuru finally found Dr. Matsumoto's clinic in the late evening as it started to lightly snow, it was hard to deny how dejected she was feeling. She had apparently just missed the doctor with him likely not even seeing her letter due to some matter he had to attend to.... and she couldn't find a single person who recognized her father's description. Sighing aloud as she looked up to the night sky that was illuminated by pale moonlight, Chizuru wished that her impatience hadn't gotten the better of her and that she had waited for the doctor's response for making her trek to Kyoto since she only had limited resources.....

If she spent her money wisely, the longest she could probably stay in Kyoto was a month given the prices of goods and lodging in the city before being forced back to head back to Edo, though it was more than likely that Dr. Matsumoto would return within that time.... Comforting herself with the thought, Chizuru smiled wryly as she decided to head towards the city harbour. If she was going to stay in Kyoto, Chizuru was determined to at least take a good look at the ocean while she knew that she had both the time and opportunity to.

It was strange, now that she thought about it as she passed by various buildings as she went through various walkways, noting that there were significantly less people around now, while maintaining a relatively fast pace which would hopefully give her the impression of being a young man being in a hurry, but she was almost certain she was heading in the direction of the ocean even though she had never asked anyone for directions...... It was however a realization not lost on her as Chizuru found herself looking at more than a dozen ships in moored at the waterfront as she gazed at the ocean.

It felt.... almost as if something inside her was being called to the water....

"Hey, kid." Hearing the rough voice disrupt her thoughts, Chizuru instinctively tightened her grip on her kodachi and stood up a little taller while shaking her head. There were.... three men.... and judging from the way they were eyeing her, it was more than likely they were lawless ronin..... She swallowed hard as she berated herself for ignoring how she knew that the streets of Kyoto at night were said to be very dangerous....

A bitter smile surfaced onto her face as she listened to them demand for her kodachi, and Chizuru didn't even bother waiting for them to finish threatening her as she began to run to the docks. There was no way she could ever choose to surrender her family's heirloom.... and she loathed to even try fighting as the daughter of a doctor, not that she could hold her own against three men.....though if it was only one, it might be a slightly different story. She at least however could say that she say was well within her element as she raced to a pier that looked as if it could offer her a decent place to hide.

The pier she had chosen had plenty of boxes and supplies all over it with two ships carrying cannons docked at its sides, which hopefully would mean they would have guards posted to them..... Unfortunately, Chizuru could see no one else aside from her pursuers continue their chase as slipped between a crate and some wooden boards.

As the ronin's footsteps came closer and stepped onto the pier, Chizuru carefully slipped her pouch of money out of her bag and into her kimono, before setting the other onto the ground as it contained her father's letters and what other supplies she had. If worse came to worse, she could just swim away and wait out the night outside.... though there was the chance that she'd freeze to death if she did that given how cold it was....

Her brows furrowed as she heard her pursuers stop, and while she expected the ronin to yell at each other while they continued to look for her, Chizuru instead heard one of them utter a horrifying scream before she heard the sounds of multiple swords being unsheathed.

"What is this?! Why won't you die?! Damn it! We gotta get out of here!" Chizuru gulped in trepidation, and carefully peeked around the corner of hiding spot. Just what was going on....?

Whoever had stopped her pursuers.... all of them had white hair, eerie red eyes, and were were smiling madly with glee. They were all clad in same light blue haori.... "Ehehehehehehehehehehehe......"

Her blood froze as she felt all the strength in her disappear as she watched these inhuman creatures raise their swords at the ronin while they begged for their lives, and Chizuru desperately tried to not make a sound as she watched them commit murder.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Whatever these creatures were, they didn't seem to care that their opponents were dead and began hacking at their corpses, but regardless of whatever they were doing now... she couldn't bear to look as the stench of blood now hung in the air.

Whatever those things were.... she felt nothing from them but madness. Broken creatures that wanted nothing but violence....

"Hngk." It took everything she had to not throw up as Chizuru covered her mouth out of fear, lurching towards the side, but to her own horror, the boards she was hiding by, fell to the ground with a rough clatter.

Almost immediately, her eyes went wide as the creatures turned to towards her with their coats drenched in blood, shaking with excitement at prey to slaughter with their hideous grins. She had heard rumours about a band of warriors who wore such a haori even before coming to Kyoto..... one that was seemingly viewed as notorious in the way they fought on land and at sea. Shaking her head for a moment as Chizuru felt her mind contemplate just that meant, if it was even true that these people were from the Shinsengumi - an organization that she knew was assigned to protecting Kyoto under the shogunate's control, she knew that she had to run.

Standing up as much as she could, Chizuru gripped her kodachi and inched backwards. She didn't want to die. She couldn't die!

_!?_

To her own surprise however, there was a flash of light as she caught a glimpse of moonlight off reflected off of a pair of new blades, but such a sight was witnessed by her underwater, having accidentally fallen backwards into the ocean.

Despite how her eyes had widened in panic upon realizing just what had happened, and how she felt a chill pass through her from her initial descent, it took Chizuru a few moments to realize that her eyes weren't being bothered by the water's saltiness.... or how the coldness she had felt upon falling into the water was completely gone.

What was going on?

First she had been threatened, then those ronin had pursued her. After that, those ronin had been attacked by someone else - creatures that seemed to want to feast on their blood..... and then hers. They were creatures who were now in the process of fighting some other men wearing the same matching light blue haori - a fight that ended almost instantly before her eyes with almost crystal clear clarity in spite of her still being underwater... and it was one that Chizuru found that she could also somehow listen to unfold, as if she wasn't even in the water at all.....

"Ah, really, Hajime-kun. You work too fast." The taller of the two new warriors looked as if he was enjoying himself. "I was planning on taking care of all of them myself."

The other man wore an impassive expression. "I only did my duty. Unlike you, I take no pleasure from this."

"Thats not a very nice to say, you know?" He laughed and shoook his head before turning to gaze towards where Chizuru was in the water. "But maybe if you didn't and let them kill that kid, you probably could have saved us some trouble...."

The tone of voice being used was light, but it confirmed Chizuru's fears. She might have been able to escape unscathed from the ronin, but now she found herself in a much darker plot...

"Perhaps. However, that decision is not ours to make, though if they have such a reaction to blood, it's unlikely that these will be of use" Those words were a reminded her what she had recalled earlier... but why were these two killing three others from what looked to be the same organization? "Vice-commander, what do you want us to do with the witness who fell into the water?"

".....If he dies, I'll see to it that they get a burial but if they're still alive and they choose to...." A third voice, one that she couldn't quite hear or see who it came from, responded from beyond her field of vision, and Chizuru instinctively knew that she didn't want to finish listening to whatever was being said as she began swimming away.

Thankfully, her initial shock had worn off as she began swimming like her life depended on it, and Chizuru felt immensely thankful for the local fishermen in her hometown who had given her pointers on how best to swim since she was self-taught and had apparently always been naturally gifted in the water.

After what felt like close to half and hour of swimming, Chizuru pulled herself out of the water by the edge of a forest that was hopefully outside of Kyoto, and felt immediately assaulted by the cold weather and started coughing. Now that she thought about it, and now that she was breathing in air.... she wondered how she hadn't even been hindered by the need to breathe normally when had been swimming, and she hadn't even gone up for air once earlier....

"Just what happening to me...?" Such a question unfortunately had no answers as Chizuru curled up against a tree and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. Unfortunately, that was was a question that she was too tired to think about now as she gazed at Kyoto in the distance and thought of how those people would undoubtedly be looking for her later. People who were probably from the Shinsengumi.....

Shaking her head as she let out an exasperated sigh, Chizuru tightened her grip on her arms as she closed her eyes, too exhausted to care. She could always try figuring everything out and what else she could do to find her father tomorrow....

* * *

"Hajime-kun...? I wasn't imagining that was I?" Seeing the genuine surprise in the other captain's eyes, Saito nodded back. For a short moment, he too felt like he needed to doubt what he had seen - namely some young man swim off after they had seen the rasetsu at an almost inhuman speed.

"No, you were not..." Turning to HIjikata-san, Saito could see that their vice-commander was looking more upset than usual as his gaze was looking in the direction that young man had gone before turning to where he had been hiding earlier, and then to the now deceased rasetsu.

"Well.... we need to have this cleaned up first.... then we need to find that person. If someone knew that the Shinsengumi was killing their own men....." There was knowing look in their vice-commander's eyes that there was saying there was no need for him to continue since Saito and Souji both knew how badly it would reflect on them if such information got out. It probably hadn't helped they were all wearing their haori... "You'd think with that person's abilities... they might be one of ours."

At Hijikata-san's words, Saito found himself inadvertently swallowing hard. Certainly, that person did seem to be able to swim faster than any of them could have been from the corps... though it was acknowledged how they had heard of similar but extremely rare feats being performed by those who lived in floating towns where people fished and dived for their livelihood. The subject of such descriptions however were never what would one refer to as a young man, but rather, people who were in the prime of their lives... Still, even if this person who had observed what transpired, and did have exemplary abilities in the water, it was highly unlikely that they also had superhuman strength of the rasetsu.

"Whoever it was.... the bag that Hajime-kun found is probably theirs." Souji's voice was quiet as he frowned. "I think they made landfall just outside of Kyoto... which is quite a distance, though I can't be sure."

"I see. Well then, Souji. Clean this up and tell Yamazaki to help dispose of the bodies, as for you Saito...." As he spoke, Saito took the initiative to hand the bag over to the vice-commander, who immediately began checking its contents... which appeared to be a number of letters, water and food. No money being in their bag likely meant that their witness had some means.... and watching Hijiakata's expression become sterner as he skimmed through a letter, Saito knew that his orders would take him outside the city as he was the one who was better at scouting. "Saito, I need you to find and bring that person back to headquarters.... and *alive*. They... might know something."

"....Understood." Supressing his bewilderment at the vice-commander's reaction to whatever he had seen, Saito nodded his head seriously. Regardless of the reasoning, his orders were paramount, and Saito would never willingly choose to disobey them.

"I'll send some of the Watch to assist you, but the others will be on standby throughout the city in case you don't find them since it's likely that they came to Kyoto for a specific reason in mind." Bowing as he accepted his orders, Saito headed out into the night.

\------------------

It was more than likely long past midnight when the snow stopped falling while Saito prowled the shoreline adjacent to one of the few roads that led out of Kyoto and onto a rough path surrounded by a verdant forest that was technically considered contested territory. Kyoto itself did not have lots of greenery in areas that was considered part of the city, which was likely by design since drawing up boundary lines for the domains was a simple way to invite conflict, though aside from those that actively wanted more land, most had a tendency to try and maintain what they had by patrolling the surrounding areas with their ships. A simple usage of defence through the force of arms.

Whomever he was searching for... he sincerely hoped that whomever they were looking for had found shelter of some kind from the cold and weather as a corpse was not very good in providing answers to whatever Hijikata-san was concerned about.... Unfortunately, he hadn't seen any signs of them....

After continuing his search for roughly another hour, Saito immediately stopped when he heard what he thought was a faint cough as he came across some snow that looked slightly uneven. Was this a possible sign of his quarry...?

Following what might have been tracks, to Saito's own surprise, it did not take him long to find someone curled up against a tree... and likely freezing given their expression. This individual... rather than a young man who they were trying to appear as given their clothes which still appeared wet, she was undoubtely a young woman - one that looked even younger than Heisuke.

Saito frowned as he tentatively placed a hand on her forehead. She was badly burning up... and it was more than likely that after fleeing the sight of him and Souji disposing of the rasetsu, that she passed out due to exhaustion given how close she still was to the ocean....

Normally, he would agree that it would be best to bring this woman to somewhere warm if she was to answer the Shinsengumi's questions... however as it was not a viable option given the distance and his inability to fight while carrying an unconscious person - one who he could not guarantee would act outside of his expectations if she was woken up if he was attacked, he settled on covering her with his haori so she at least would have some protection from the cold. Until dawn arrived, that was the most Saito could afford to do.

\------------------

After spending several hours on watch, Saito felt that whoever this young woman was, it was fairly probable that she was searching for her father given the number of times she called out for him with occasional tears around her eyes as she did so.... as such behaviour might have been owed if her father went missing. Unfortunately, there was not much aside from sympathy that Saito knew he could offer given how large Kyoto was, and that was assuming it was this woman's intention to visit the city and not passing through it.

While he was uncertain if she would be in any condition to answer the vice-commanders likely urgent questions as her coughing had largely gotten worse even though her expression had largely improved since he had started a fire at the day's first light, he was grateful how it appeared that she would be waking up soon since he hadn't seen any of the Watch. Normally, he would have expected one of the Watch to make an appearance given his location, but the fact that he hadn't might be an indication that they had encountered problems.... and ones that wielded blades since it was known that various domains vying for Kyoto prowled the city's surroundings under the guise of being pirates or lawless ronin for the purpose of murder and sabotage, though now that there was daylight, it was unlikely that such brazen action would be taken in the open.

"Father...." The woman's eyes were sleepy as she woke up and rubbed her eyes, though once she saw his haori that he had laid over her, there was a mix of surprise and fear in them as she slowly met his gaze with wide and alert eyes. "You... I saw you last night...."

Seeing how she unsteadily got to her feet only to collapse as Saito moved to catch her, he frowned. He hadn't known that she had a good look of either him or Souji last night since neither of them had been able to observe her features under those circumstances. "....You should not be moving. You have a bad fever."

"I.... ah?" Perhaps it was because she noticed how unwell she was feeling did the woman in his arms suddenly stop struggling to get away, though it might be more accurate to say that she was forced into doing so by her own body given how warm she felt. "You..."

"I am not going to hurt you." Speaking as calmly as he could, Saito sincerely hoped that this young woman would understand that she was not in danger from him, which was likely necessary do the perception people held of the Shinsengumi. "My name is Saito. I only wish to inform you that my vice-commander has a few questions for you." Although her eyes looked at him with both unwillingness and fear, Saito could feel her body slightly relax against his for a moment as she calmed down though he continued quickly as he was not certain she would believe him. "I promise that nothing will happen to you while in my care."

At his words, a weak hand grabbed at his kimono, and Saito found himself looking into a feverish but steady gaze - one that seemed to know that he was not telling her the full truth... but parts of it nonetheless. "My name is Chizuru...."

Saito barely caught Chizuru's name before she passed out against him.

**Author's Note:**

> not sure where im going with this.... but as ive been reading Fathom a lot lately, I have some ideas for some general direction of this story....


End file.
